Murdoch's Revolution

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Documentary, Murdoch's Revolution   #Documentary #MurdochRevolution #Revolution

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00:01This is the story of how Rupert Murdoch took over the old newspapers of Fleet Street

00:05and used them to wage a cultural revolution against the snobbish elites that dominated Britain.

00:13But there was a weird logic to Murdoch's revolution that would lead him to intrude

00:17ever more deeply into people's private lives and would eventually bring his empire to the

00:23brink of destruction. And it talks on the phone. The world's top talking power. Murdoch's populist

00:32revolution failed to change Britain's power structure. Yet his failure would open the way

00:39for the rise of a new elite who are far more invasive into all our private lives than Murdoch's

00:45papers ever were. Well, we'll send one of our best parrot photographers, Patty. How's that?

00:53Rupert Murdoch shocked the British establishment right from the start. In 1969, he bought the

00:59News of the World and immediately published the diaries of the model and cool girl, Christine

01:04Keeler. They unearthed an old sex scandal about a conservative politician called John Profuma.

01:11And the British establishment were scandalised. Christine Keeler, the girl who sparked off a

01:16drama of government scandals, spying, intrigue and even death. On Sunday, Christine opens her

01:21secret diary and tells the first full story in the News of the World.

01:27I was young and naive then, but now I've had time to think. This is the first time the public

01:32will be able to read the real truth. Do you have any qualms about that as muckraking and going over

01:38an old scandal that should be dead and buried by now? No, no, certainly not. And it shouldn't be dead

01:44and buried either. The vicious reaction of the British upper classes shocked Murdoch.

01:49And in the 1970s, he fled with his young family to the United States. And he used the money pouring

01:55in from his British newspapers to start building an American empire. And his personal myth began to

02:02take shape, that he was a revolutionary outsider, challenging the decadent British system.

02:08In 1976, he said in an interview, in Britain, it's very easy to get sucked into the establishment.

02:15I think when people start taking knighthoods and peerages, it's really telling the world that you've

02:21sold out. I just wasn't prepared to join the system. And in 1981, Murdoch came back and took his revenge.

02:30He bought the Times and made it clear that he was now challenging the hypocritical elites wherever

02:36they were in Britain or America. They hate to see someone communicating with the masses. They feel

02:44that newspapers, the written word is not for the masses. That should be left to television or perhaps

02:49to nobody. But there's a great sort of elitism. That was a typical piece of slanting and elitism by the BBC.

02:55I don't know what you mean by down market and up market. That is so English class-ridden snobbery

03:01when you talk like that. Over the next 30 years, Murdoch's newspapers promoted a populist idea of

03:07democracy. This challenged the idea that anyone could set themselves up in Britain as a superior elite

03:14and tell people what was best for them. But there was a ferocious logic to this idea of democracy.

03:22Because if everyone was equal, then no one was special. And that had big implications for the

03:28celebrities who had become central to Murdoch's newspapers. If they were more famous than the rest

03:34of us, it meant they were different from us. And the Murdoch vision didn't like the idea of anyone being

03:40different. So celebrities had to be transformed so they would become more like us. Flawed and unhappy,

03:48drinking too much and eating too little, struggling with emotional problems and with cellulite.

03:56But most celebrities didn't want to be seen like that.

03:59So Murdoch's journalists had to resort to increasingly devious methods to give us the information we

04:05craved. The private failings and weaknesses of the famous.

04:12Today, Murdoch may be on the way out, but we all still distrust elites. And there is a new empire

04:19that offers the same dream of a world without hierarchies where we are in control.

04:24It is Google, with its promise of information flowing free of all political control and where

04:31everyone talks to each other as equals. But the price we pay for this is that Google's machines

04:39watch us all the time and know everything about us. And they don't even have to pay for private

04:45detectives or for phone taps. And the strange thing is, we don't seem to be bothered about this at all.

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